Power-Aware Relay Selection and Routing Scheme for Multi-Interface Sensor Networks

We present a joint relay and radio interface selection algorithm with packet deadline under limited power usage in multi-interface sensor networks. We find route optimization techniques in multi-interface networks: 1) selecting the most conservatively lowest-power interface to guarantee timely transmission considering the remaining hops to destination, and 2) searching detouring paths when the power level of an involved relay node is too low to use the necessary interface that guarantees timely delivery. We aim to achieve data delivery with packet deadline requirement while minimizing energy consumption at each node, and further prolonging network lifetime by selecting cost-effective relay nodes and wireless interfaces. We evaluate our proposed algorithm in terms of total power consumption and packet delivery performance, compared to homogeneous radio interface scenarios of only Wi-Fi interface and only 802.15.4 ZigBee interface. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm exploits the given packet delivery time enough to conserve power consumption by selecting as low power interface as possible, and spreading out network traffic over the network. Our proposed algorithm demonstrates very reliable packet delivery performance without incurring delivery failures due to power outage and missed deadline.